i7 3770 vs i5 4690 vs Ryzen 7 2700 for only gaming?

[Ilegator]

I've been doing my own research for a while now and I can't get an answer. I think the i7 and the i5 are better in single thread therefore they will perform better in most non new games (is that right?).

I want the CPU exclusively for gaming and I don't think I'll stream. I can OC both i7 and i5 but it will be hard to OC the R7 because the motherboard has B350 chipset. I'll have good airflow and I bought heatsinks for the VRM tho. 

My GPU is GTX 1660 and I play 1080p 144hz but I might upgrade to a 1070 or a 1080 (ti?). If I upgrade to a 1070/1080 (ti) which processor will bottleneck the GPU the less? I think the R7 but only because of the DDR4 RAM.

One more thing to mention is that I'm looking more for FPS stability rather than unstable FPS. Is there any way to achieve that?

 

RAM for the i7/i5: 2x8 1600mhz CL9

RAM for the R7: 2x8 3000mhz CL15

PSU: Corsair 750W 80 plus gold.

 

The other PC will be sold so I can upgrade from the 1660 to the 1070/1080 (ti?)

 

Thank you!!

 

Pd: it's i7 non K, i5 non K and R7 non X.

[SPARTAN VI]

I'd go with the Ryzen 2700 over an Ivy Bridge i7 or Haswell i5. I realize this is the Ryzen 3600 review, but it has the 2700X on the charts, which is going to be identical (if not within 1fps) of the non-X: https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_ryzen_5_3600_review,23.html

 

From here you can appoximate from the i5-6600K on the charts, which will be about your best case scenario with the Ivy Bridge i7 and Haswell i5.

[Mateyyy]

The 2700 is better in single-threaded performance too, unless you compare it at stock speeds to a heavily overclocked Haswell/Ivy Bridge.

It's the obvious choice here imo, unless you can get your hands on a 3600, which would be even better.

[Bombastinator]

Older CPUs for older games, generally.  The thing about the new ryzen CPUs is they can play the older games reasonably well, but also the new stuff that can gain advantage from more threads.  If a game can’t access the larger available number of threads they don’t matter for that game. It won’t be able to access the entire CPU. What a 2700 could do over an older chip running an older game is run the game AND something else as well at the same time without losing game performance.  Remember also, the 2700 is zen+ not zen2.  What made folks so excited about zen2 is it had single thread on par or nearly on par with older fast 4 cores while also having more cores. 
Zen+ has been out for a while and didn’t generate the buzz zen2 did when it came out.  People are taking another look at zen+ though because many of the things that zen2 did with faster memory and such seem to be able to be applied to zen+ as well, making zen+ now faster than zen+ then.  The entire zen family it seems gains a LOT from fast memory and faster memory came out.

 

So, if you do zen+ without adding the new tricks, primarily much faster memory, you are correct.  Adding the new tweaks though makes it a much closer game in single thread performance while also having that other capacity which things are expected to grow into.

Edited February 4, 2020 by Bombastinator
Additions and typos

[thedangerine]

You shouldn't have any real issues overclocking the ryzen chip despite being on b350, assuming the vrm has the cooling for it. I would go for the ryzen chip personally considering it was built on the 12nm process rather than 22nm from the old Intel chips, not to mention with ryzen you get DDR4(and higher capacity support), NVMe support, overclocking capability, and better performance in games to. You limit yourself in so many ways with something as old as those intel chips

[Princess Luna]

I don't think it makes sense to compare a R7 2700 with such old processors from Intel.

[Sir0Tek]

27 minutes ago, Ilegator said:

I've been doing my own research for a while now and I can't get an answer. I think the i7 and the i5 are better in single thread therefore they will perform better in most non new games (is that right?).

I want the CPU exclusively for gaming and I don't think I'll stream. I can OC both i7 and i5 but it will be hard to OC the R7 because the motherboard has B350 chipset. I'll have good airflow and I bought heatsinks for the VRM tho. 

My GPU is GTX 1660 and I play 1080p 144hz but I might upgrade to a 1070 or a 1080 (ti?). If I upgrade to a 1070/1080 (ti) which processor will bottleneck the GPU the less? I think the R7 but only because of the DDR4 RAM.

One more thing to mention is that I'm looking more for FPS stability rather than unstable FPS. Is there any way to achieve that?

 

RAM for the i7/i5: 2x8 1600mhz CL9

RAM for the R7: 2x8 3000mhz CL15

PSU: Corsair 750W 80 plus gold.

 

The other PC will be sold so I can upgrade from the 1660 to the 1070/1080 (ti?)

 

Thank you!!

 

Pd: it's i7 non K, i5 non K and R7 non X.

If you have to buy everything and price isn't the problem then the Ryzen is the obvious choice. The 4690 is quite a good gaming cpu nonetheless, and not that demanding for what mainboard you should use - b85 is ok, and darn cheap. Most games will do quite fine with it, unless titles like Battlefield will be played. 

The I7 3770 can go +400mhz on top of its standard clocks, so it is still quite a beast, giving a Ryzen 1600 a good run for the money. Depending on the mainboard used you can go higher than DDR3 1600 with quite some gain on DDR3 1866. A mainboard that squeezes its potential isn't that cheap compared to the 4690. Usually the I7 3770 sells at a higher price as well compared to the Haswell, due to the partial overclock of course.

If you do already own one or the other I'd invest more in the graphics card and leave the rest untouched.

[Ilegator]

1 hour ago, Sir0Tek said:

If you do already own one or the other I'd invest more in the graphics card and leave the rest untouched.

I already have all of them but I want to sell worst one for gaming. Also, which graphics card would you recommend me to upgrade to?

[Ilegator]

1 hour ago, thedangerine said:

You shouldn't have any real issues overclocking the ryzen chip despite being on b350, assuming the vrm has the cooling for it. I would go for the ryzen chip personally considering it was built on the 12nm process rather than 22nm from the old Intel chips, not to mention with ryzen you get DDR4(and higher capacity support), NVMe support, overclocking capability, and better performance in games to. You limit yourself in so many ways with something as old as those intel chips

In that case, which graphics card upgrade would you recommend me? I'm looking more for used cards.

[Bombastinator]

Just now, Ilegator said:

I already have all of them but I want to sell worst one for gaming. Also, which graphics card would you recommend me to upgrade to?

I would say the i5 myself as it’s got the least future, though it’s kind of a tossup between the 3770k and the i5 at this point both of them are limited life.

 

As for GPUs the current conventional wisdom is if you already have something that works OK, sit on it and wait because new GPUs are being teased to be announced soonish.

[thedangerine]

1 minute ago, Ilegator said:

In that case, which graphics card upgrade would you recommend me? I'm looking more for used cards.

That CPU shouldn't bottleneck any of the cards you have listed, I would go either 1070 or 1080, really just depends on the games you play and at what resolution/refresh rate

[Ilegator]

 

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

Remember also, the 2700 is zen+ not zen2.  What made folks so excited about zen2 is it had single thread on par or nearly on par with older fast 4 cores while also having more cores. 
Zen+ has been out for a while and didn’t generate the buzz zen2 did when it came out.  People are taking another look at zen+ though because many of the things that zen2 did with faster memory and such seem to be able to be applied to zen+ as well, making zen+ now faster than zen+ then.  The entire zen family it seems gains a LOT from fast memory and faster memory came out.

 

So, if you do zen+ without adding the new tricks, primarily much faster memory, you are correct.  Adding the new tweaks though makes it a much closer game in single thread performance while also having that other capacity which things are expected to grow into.

So what you recommend me is to try to overclock that 3000mhz RAM as much as I can? Will it be easy in a B350 motherboard? What else should I try in order to get the max potential out of the zen+?

[Sir0Tek]

2 minutes ago, Ilegator said:

I already have all of them but I want to sell worst one for gaming. Also, which graphics card would you recommend me to upgrade to?

So you can bench it all first hand...

I'd go for the rtx2060 Super, it usually beats the 1070/1070ti in newer titles and it will be tough (albeit not impossible) to find a 1070ti or 1080 at a reasonable price.

[Sir0Tek]

26 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I would say the i5 myself as it’s got the least future, though it’s kind of a tossup between the 3770k and the i5 at this point both of them are limited life.

 

As for GPUs the current conventional wisdom is if you already have something that works OK, sit on it and wait because new GPUs are being teased to be announced soonish.

The 3770 will beat the i5 in more cpu-demanding titles where threadcount matters, and if partial-overclock is used it does beat the Haswell in almost every way possible. Also, the Haswell-system doesn't need much power with the stated gpu, 400-450W should be fine if the psu is compatible with c1/c2. Cooling doesn't need to be great to get this system running.

[Bombastinator]

34 minutes ago, Ilegator said:

 

So what you recommend me is to try to overclock that 3000mhz RAM as much as I can? Will it be easy in a B350 motherboard? What else should I try in order to get the max potential out of the zen+?

I don’t know.  I haven’t done ram overclocking. I understand manual ram overclocking is a famous pita.  There’s supposed to be an unofficial app that helps. Called dram[something]. I’m not sure how much. It’s apparently sort of a questionnaire where you type in a bunch of data about your ram and it spits out what you should set your stuff to in various places.  There are several descriptions.  I’ve never used it myself.

[Bombastinator]

25 minutes ago, Sir0Tek said:

The 3770 will beat the i5 in more cpu-demanding titles where threadcount matters, and if partial-overclock is used it does beat the Haswell in almost every way possible. Also, the Haswell-system doesn't need much power with the stated gpu, 400-450W should be fine if the psu is compatible with c1/c2. Cooling doesn't need to be great to get this system running.

You appear to have better granularity than me for this one.  My statements were fairly rough.

[Sir0Tek]

6 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

You appear to have better granularity than me for this one.  My statements were fairly rough.

Haswell is improved for single thread and power efficiency, and at identical clocks it is quite tough for the I7 3770. But once the latter runs with turbo up to 4.3ghz (at 100mhz fsb) the Haswell is the one looking old, well, on >=30% lower wattage. 

[Bombastinator]

16 minutes ago, Sir0Tek said:

Haswell is improved for single thread and power efficiency, and at identical clocks it is quite tough for the I7 3770. But once the latter runs with turbo up to 4.3ghz (at 100mhz fsb) the Haswell is the one looking old, well, on >=30% lower wattage. 

There’s also the spectre/meltdown “mitigation”s. They hit older chips differently but they were all hit pretty hard.  It was so bad I have friends that dumped am64 entirely over it. I might have too but I like to play video games.

[cesh me inside b0z]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

There’s also the spectre/meltdown “mitigation”s. They hit older chips differently but they were all hit pretty hard.  It was so bad I have friends that dumped am64 entirely over it. I might have too but I like to play video games.

I run a 3550 Core i5 test bench and the difference with the patch on or off is literally nil.

[Bombastinator]

Just now, cesh me inside b0z said:

I run a 3550 Core i5 test bench and the difference with the patch on or off is literally nil.

That makes sense.  A lot of the issue was with hyperthreading and an i5 doesn’t have it.

[Sir0Tek]

22 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

That makes sense.  A lot of the issue was with hyperthreading and an i5 doesn’t have it.

Yes, HT is hit pretty hard, and Haswell is hit more than Ivy Bridge.

There are mitigations which do have influence on cache-behaviour, those should as well have an influence on i5. I do disable some mitigations since I do not run a VM and I have no critical environment. I leave retpoline activated. 

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, Sir0Tek said:

Yes, HT is hit pretty hard, and Haswell is hit more than Ivy Bridge.

There are mitigations which do have influence on cache-behaviour, those should as well have an influence on i5. I do disable some mitigations since I do not run a VM and I have no critical environment. I leave retpoline activated. 

An attitude issue.  I wish there were more myself.  I haven’t looked into the nuts and bolts of how the mitigations were done.  The people I know who have the capacity to do such things considered them inadequate and abandoned AMD64 entirely.  They don’t game though.